The present invention relates to a device for feeding a supporting member of a construction panel. More particularly, it relates to a device for feeding a supporting member of a construction panel utilized for manufacturing the construction panel 10 having a three dimensional structure as shown in FIG. 1.
The construction panel 10 has an upper wire mesh 18 arranged with longitudinal wires 14 and latitudinal wires 16 and a lower wire mesh 24 arranged with longitudinal wires 20 and latitudinal wires 22 and positioned with predetermined intervals at the top and bottom of a usual heat insulating core material 12 made of synthetic resin foam such as polystyrene. The panel also has supporting members 26,28 extending in different directions and welded to the upper wire mesh 18 and the lower wire mesh 24 by piercing through the heat insulating core 12.
The supporting members include a first supporting member 26 and a second supporting member 28. Both end portions of the first and second supporting members 26,28 are spot welded to the longitudinal wire meshes 14,20 of the upper and lower wire meshes 18,24.
A method for manufacturing such a construction panel 10 having a three dimensional structure is described in the Korean Utility Model Registration No. 68,190 (U.S. Pat. No. 5,102,027, Chinese Patent Publication No. CN1059950A), and Korean Patent Application No. 92-13061 (U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/007,846 and Chinese Patent Application No. 92111269.6).
The manufacturing machine described in the above documents has a supporting member feeding device of a rotary type, which comprises a hopper with the supporting members previously cut to a predetermined length, a chute for free dropping the supporting members, and a rotary drum having a number of grooves into which the supporting members are inserted one by one between the hopper and the chute. A vibrating means is attached to the hopper such that the supporting members could be placed well one by one into the interior of the rotary drum.
The diameter of the supporting members of the supporting member feeding device is relatively small, e.g., approximately 2 mm. Therefore, the supporting members located at the outlet side of the hopper, i.e., the supporting members to be located adjacent to the rotary drum, are strongly pressed by a pressure of a sideward direction of the other supporting members located at both its side surfaces and become conglomerated together. Therefore, even if the hopper was vibrated at the upper side of the hopper, a conglomerated state of the supporting members as described above cannot be satisfactorily scattered. As a result, the supporting members are not precisely loaded into the groove of the rotary drum and thereby a feeding error of the supporting members occurs.
The feeding is performed toward the slant outlet at the lowermost side of the chute located below the rotary drum, so that a plunger of a pneumatic pressure-type inserting-through means moving in this region pushes the supporting members toward the outlet. The feeding is performed by a free dropping method by the self weight of the supporting members. As a result, it becomes difficult to make the feeding timing and the inserting-through timing exactly match one another.